Tzadkiel's form

Lee · 17 Sep 2014, 13:02 · from 2014-September.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee)
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 09:02:53 -0400
Subject: (urth) Tzadkiel's form
Message-ID: <BLU175-W31DBF16BE79C7C58EB43C1CFB60 at phx.gbl>

>Marc Aramini:  

>Hethor the perverted and debased sailor who keeps his little sex doll in
>the closet and is manipulated by Agia, always motivated by a terrible need
>for revenge, is not a good character fit for being related to the actual
>paragon of Urth. (Tzadkiel pretty much serves as proxy for Sev in the
>trial).

I disagree on two counts. First, Hethor makes a great urthly version of 

Tzadkiel if the purpose of the form is disguise. Naturally if it really is

a literary disguise we, the readers, will need some means of penetrating

that disguise. I find Tzadkiel's otherwise inexplicable revelation that he 

had been Severian's acolyte to be one such means of identification.

I find Hethor's mastery of mirrors and monsters, connecting him to 

Father Inire to be another clue that we are meant to look more closely

at Hethor's identity. (Hethor and Inire also share a lecherous

yen for young women). The fact that Hethor's real name is hinted at but 

never revealed is another clue that we should be asking "who is this, 

really?"

Second, it makes sense within the religio/mythological model I have

presented. If an angel falls to earth, it becomes, by definition, a demon.

And one of the primary characteristics of Judeo-Christian fallen angels

(and their cognates, the Greco-Roman gods) is that they became obsessed

with mating with human women. It was one of the main things they do.

>Characterization in Wolfe is important.  You can't have a stuttering blood
>thirsty persecution complex easily manipulated guy actually be the guardian
>angel of Urth without really ignoring characterization wholesale.

Disguised identity and extremely subtle hints for seeing through the disguise

is surely a pervasive theme in Wolfe's writing. Consider Tzadkiel, perhaps the

single most widely-disguised character in all of Wolfe's work. Severian is

eventually able to recognize Tzadkiel's forms ranging from a furry 

animal to several human forms to several angelic forms while he is on the

Ship. Let's not forget the saucy "tinker bell" version, who would seem to share 

no personality traits whatsoever with the larger, male versions of Tzadkiel but

is still, unquestionably, a version of Tzadkiel.

But we, the readers, are expected to see MORE than our unreliable narrator 

Severian reports. If he can see that many versions of Tzadkiel on the Ship (and

Yesod and Brook Madregot) then surely we are invited to detect further versions 

of him/her on Urth. And if we start looking for fallen angels on Urth, the search

surely does not end with Hethor.

>As far as published work on New Sun, my problem with Borski is he wants to
>collapse all the characters into one or two and doesn't really think
>logically.

I generally agree. Borski has a great literary "eye" for "dots" but he isn't the best

at connecting them. For example, he takes the single Mt. Nebo reference as a

sign that Father Inire is a "moses-figure" without any attempt to connect that

to the many, many other hints that Wolfe is using a broad palette of pre-Christian

mythology to create the characters and setting for BotNS.  If there was any doubt 

about that, the continuation of the trend in Long Sun and Short Sun is sufficient 

confirmation for me. 

>Wright's reading of The God and His Man as a metafictional criticism of
>readers killing the author's intention is ironically about as far off as a
>reading can get, too.

I think Wright also has a good literary eye, but interpreting Wolfe from atheistic

perspective is a virtual guarantee of missing much of the author's intentions. It

ends up being more about Wright than Wolfe.

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